Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (5 page)

Thaeson said nothing else until they came out of the forest, where he stopped dead at the sight of what was awaiting them. “This is why we must press on with our plans. Time, I’m afraid, has grown far shorter than any of us feared.”

“By the Fathers,” Edrik said, eyeing the band of white mist caught between the edge of the Sleeping Wood and the Shield of the Fathers. Beyond the trees, starlight filtered down through the barrier, turning the mist into a river of milk.

Edrik raised his eyes, searching. He found an undulating breach in the faintly glimmering wall. With a moaning sigh, frigid air poured through the gap that should not have been possible.

“How did this happen,
Essan
?” Edrik asked, having always believed the Shield of the Fathers was impenetrable.

“Wait here,” Thaeson said in answer.

Edrik caught his arm. “I can help, if you grant me the power to do so.”

“That time will come sooner than you think or want,” Thaeson said, sounding regretful. “But this, my boy, I must do alone. Do not come any closer, or you will die.”

Thaeson tottered off through the mist, leaving swirling eddies in his wake. Edrik dared not let his eyes wander. Shivering from the unnatural cold, he watched until the
essan
had vanished, his hand held before his face to ward against the bitter chill of the Iron Marches coming through the breach.

~ ~ ~

A long time later, Thaeson came back into view, a girl’s limp figure held in his arms. He struggled closer under the burden, then he abruptly knelt down amid the restless ground fog.

Edrik waited, tense, sure his bones were about to crack from the cold, sure that his master hadn’t knelt at all, but had collapsed.
Should I go to him?

His answer was Thaeson’s earlier admonition to stay put, lest he die from proximity to the Shield of the Fathers. Every citizen of Targas learned the same from childhood. Even without the
vizien
patrols that kept watch on the Sleeping Wood, most folk never considered venturing too close to the wall, for fear of a terrible and painful death.

And here you stand
, a mocking voice whispered,
afraid as all your flock
.
Yet not an hour past, you thought of dying for your master, if he but asked it of you.

Edrik began to step forward, but an unpleasant gurgling sound halted him. His eyes widened as the rift in the Shield of the Fathers began to close. As the gap shrank, the gurgling noise became a hissing scream, like a well-heated teapot. As soon as the fissure cut off the river of mist, nighttime silence fell.

He was again considering taking his chances with approaching the Shield of the Fathers, when Thaeson stood up and moved laboriously toward him. The girl he had left buried in the mist. Edrik guessed Thaeson would send some others to fetch her remains. For the sake of secrecy, members of the
vizien
caste, perhaps even him, would bury her without ceremony. The girl’s family and friends would wonder what had happened to her, but the farmlands around Targas were extensive, the Sleeping Wood dark and deep, so it was not unheard of for people to go missing from time to time. And if she had told any accomplices she intended to flee, Edrik supposed they would assume she had made good on her word.

“By Blood and by Water,” Thaeson said, “we are yet safe.”

“How was the wall breached?” Edrik asked. Insofar as he knew, the Shield of the Fathers was as eternal as the Everlasting City of Light, and only those who drank of the precious Blood of Life could pass through unharmed.

Thaeson shook his head. “All that matters is that it’s whole again, and we’re safe.” Before Edrik could press his concerns, the
essan
added, “The hour to act as come.”

Edrik swallowed. “The Oracle’s foretelling?”

Thaeson’s answer was a simple nod.

“There is no other way?”

This time, the
essan
shook his head. “
Quidan
Salris has waited as long as he dared. When I tell him what has happened, he’ll sanction your journey to seek the man of which the Oracle foretold.”

Edrik imagined the endless cold beyond the wall, and how even the diluted touch of it gushing through the breach had threatened to freeze him solid.
How can anyone survive out there?
It was not the first time he had entertained the thought since learning of the mission he was to embark on, but now it seemed far more important. His fears got the best of him.

“Are you
sure
there’s no other way—is
Quidan
Salris sure?”

Thaeson put on a somber face. “We are sure because the Oracle is sure, my boy.”

“What if the Oracle is wrong?” Edrik demanded.

Thaeson caught his shoulders in a surprisingly firm grip. “Such questions are what have led us to the brink of calamity, boy! Do not allow such discontent to blacken your heart. You must
believe
what we do is right.” His face softened. “Trust in this, boy, if nothing else. After you’ve completed your mission and returned, you’ll see with your living eyes the darkness that infests the hearts of the traitors who stand opposed to us. You’ll understand the vile, filthy darkness they seek to sow into the hearts of the good folk of Targas. Keep your doubts if you must, but in time, you’ll learn that the Munam a’Dett is the only virtuous faction in our blessed city.”

Edrik nodded. “I must prepare myself … and tell Kyreen.”

“Tell your wife only that I’ve sent you and the others to the far side of Targas on Munam a’Dett business.”

Edrik bowed his head, seeing his pregnant young wife behind his eyes. Kyreen was his strength. He hated the idea of lying to her, but it was for her sake, and for the sake of their unborn child, that he had agreed to travel into the ugly and blasphemous world of the
deycath
. “Of course,
Essan
.”

Thaeson produced a small golden flask and placed it into Edrik’s palm. Gently, the
essan
closed the younger man’s fingers around it. “The Blood of Life will grant you, and those who join you, leave to pass through the Shield of the Fathers unharmed. Take a sip, my boy, and feel the power of the Munam a’Dett.”

The flask’s worn engravings pressed against his hand, but it was the heat of the object, warm as living blood, that drew his attention.
The Blood of Life
, he thought. The day he had donned his acolyte’s robes, he learned of the hallowed potion, its purposes and powers, but it had never crossed his mind that the Blood of Life might actually be blood.

Mesmerized, he pulled the stopper, raised the flask, and took a tentative sip. Just as he feared, the flavor of salt and rust swarmed over his tongue. The elixir was far thicker than blood. When he began gagging, Thaeson clutched his arm.

“Keep it down, boy! It is far too precious to spew on the ground.”

Edrik gagged again, gulped at the saliva and bile flooding the back of his throat, and somehow managed to swallow the Blood of Life. He kept swallowing until the worst of the taste was gone from his mouth.

“Good,” Thaeson said. “Very good.”

Edrik could only nod. The Iron Marches awaited him, along with a man bearing the mark of his namesake. Such a mark could only be a sign of evil and pain … and yet in this man rested the hope of Targas.
By Blood and by Water, protect me, Fathers!

Chapter 3

Fumbling his coin purse, Rathe stooped to retrieve it from the ground. Yesterday’s slushy quagmire of mud and snow had frozen into an uneven crust overnight, leaving him to brush dirty bits of ice off the leather sack. Before he straightened, eyes darting imperceptibly, he searched up and down the street for any sign of followers. He saw nothing suspicious.

Two turns back, he had paused to look through a chandler’s window, feigning interest in the displayed candles and soaps, while at the same time taking pains to see if anyone seemed out of place. Perhaps a watchful man leaning against a doorframe, or the flash of someone ducking into an alley. Then as now, Rathe had seen only the folk of Iceford going about their daily tasks.

He tilted his head back to scratch idly at his dark-whiskered chin, his gaze flickering across the rooftops to a pair of chimneys rising above a baker’s shop. Other than a line of watchful crows perched just beyond the lazy plumes of rising smoke, there was nothing alarming.

Where are you?
he wondered, picturing the thin face of the fellow he had named the Shadowman, who had trailed him across the Gyntors, and who he had fought in the halls of Ravenhold. Despite what Loro, Nesaea, and Fira believed, Rathe was sure the murderous bastard had also been stalking him during their time in Iceford. His belief was so strong that he had shaved off his black locks and grown a short beard, in order to disguise himself against the Shadowman, who moved about the world with ghostlike ease.

Hiding his disquiet behind a bored expression, Rathe set off again, glancing at the stone-and-timber shops and homes lining the narrow street, their thatched roofs thrusting toward a lowering gray sky. Being from the warm climes of Cerrikoth, the frosty reaches of the Iron Marches were strange to him in many ways, but he knew weather when he saw it. More snow would soon fall. Over the last fortnight, it snowed more days than not.

Snow and increasingly bitter cold distressed Rathe almost as much as the unseen eyes he sensed, for Captain Ostre had warned of the need to reach the White Sea before the River Sedge froze. Rathe’s companions were confident Ostre would get his ship in order, and the burly captain impressed Rathe as a man of his word, but after walking the decks of the
Lamprey
, Rathe was not so sure the wallowing tub could meet its master’s demands. More troublesome were the continual setbacks that plagued ship and crew. As it stood now, the
Lamprey
was not sailing anywhere.

Not for the first time, Rathe weighed the option of riding west along the River Sedge to the White Sea, and there boarding a merchant ship bound for the south. He drew up his hood as the first flakes of snow began to fall, knowing in his heart the time for riding downriver was long past. If Ostre failed to get the
Lamprey
fit to sail, Rathe and his friends would be stuck in Iceford until the spring thaw.

There are worse things than spending a long winter in the arms of a beautiful woman
, he thought, envisioning Nesaea’s raven curls falling over her smooth shoulders, her violet eyes, her—

He cleaved the visions of his lover before they became too distracting. All his fruitless cautions had put him behind schedule. He needed to reach the far side of the village by noontime, for those awaiting him were the most impatient lot he had ever met.

Wending his way across the village took him through Iceford’s market square, where hordes of men in drab woolen cloaks and women in heavy, unflattering dresses slowed him further. He mingled with the crowds, and the watched feeling faded a bit.

The market was little different from any others he had been to. Noisy children ran about underfoot. Chickens clucked in their wicker cages, and geese honked in theirs, each unknowing that cook pots waited in their future. Wood smoke mingled with the scent of pigs and sheep, sweat and cooking meat.

When Rathe passed by a pen holding a handful of yaks, he wondered about his fidgety friend Horge who, it had turned out, was a shapeshifter. When Loro had queried about eating yak, Horge had explained that folk prized the wooly beasts’ milk and cheese over their meat. Horge, Rathe expected, was doing fine in his new home of Ravenhold.

Soon after he escaped the market square, the weight of unseen eyes fell on him again, heavier than before. The sensation was so strong that he ducked into an alley beside a cooper’s workshop. A glance over his shoulder showed him nothing, and he fell into a crouch between two wagons loaded with barrels and casks. Looking through the wheels, he watched folk leaving the market square, and others going toward it.
Am I imagining watchers
?

Rathe stood up and hurried down the alley. He came out on a side street, searched both ways, then headed toward a rutted track that led to the eastern edge of Iceford. Here the forest tumbled down off the snowy feet of the Gyntors, and grew thickly amongst a scatter of hovels. Neither Iceford nor Wyvernmoor, farther east, had defensive walls. With the fall of the once powerful Iron Kings some five hundred years before, the last hostile armies of the north had long since dwindled to nothing. Roving brigands kept to the River Sedge in hopes of finding a grounded barge or river trader. They knew better than to attack villages inhabited by able-bodied woodcutters, miners, and trappers, folk who would dispatch a troublesome sort without hesitation, and then happily dump what was left of the marauder in the forest to feed bears, wolves, or frost leopards.

Rathe kept on along the frozen track until coming to a long, low, weathered-gray building. Iceford’s tannery. Despite the increasing snowfall and the deepening cold, the reek of rotten hides filled the air. The lower, riper stench of urine and dung fermenting in large vats, both used to soften rawhide into leather, made Rathe wish he had chosen a different sort to do his bidding. But Nesaea had told him urchins tended to see more than adults, as their lives very often depended on keen observation. The children he had employed were not the usual urchins found in a city, but dung-gathers serving the tanners.